Strategic Alignment and Performance Management

“Strategic planning or management is a continuous, interactive process aimed at keeping an organisation as a whole appropriately matched to its environment.” S.C CERTO and J.P PETER

“Strategic planning or management is the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organisation to achieve its objectives.” FRED R. DAVID

Mandate Molefi’s Strategic Planning Workshop is based on the assumption that buy-in and sense of ownership can only be achieved through real participation. The workshops focus is on joint problem solving; consensus decision making; effective handling of team conflict; and diversity management.

The table below reflects our approach to strategic alignment:

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Maps the Direction

BUDGETS

Allocate the Resources

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Maps the Direction

BUDGETS

Allocate the Resources

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a disciplined, creative process for determining how to take your organisation from where it is today to where you wish it to be in the future. It is fundamentally a decision making process, based on asking simple (but deep) questions, analysing the range of answers, and choosing among them:

What do we do?

Where are we going?

Where are we now?

How will we get there?

How did we get here?

When will we get there?

Why are we in business?

What will it cost?

This process encompasses the entire spectrum of issues an organisation faces, ranging from the big ones of who you are, what you do, and what your corporate values are to the smaller but equally important ones that connect the focus on the future with the work that must be performed soon to move the organisation forward.

The benefits of strategic planning are manifold since it:

Asks and answers questions of key importance to the organisation

Provides a framework for decision making throughout the organisation

Reveals and clarifies future opportunities and threats

Sets specific objectives for achievement

Provides a basis for measuring performance

Serves as a channel of communication

Develops a team which is focused on the organisation’s future

Provides managerial training

The above benefits can be encapsulated in a single statement:

“Strategic planning aligns the total organisation – people, processes, and resources – with a clear, compelling, and desired future state.”

Performance management

Effective Performance Management is essential for any organisation. If performance is not measured, it cannot be improved, and therefore Performance Management is not about bonuses and remuneration, but about development. The Performance Management model and policy should identify and prioritise the measurable key result areas within your organisation and align these at an individual level. Continuous measurement of these key result areas should identify those organisational functions, people and allied resources that are not maximising the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. Performance Management should at all times be based on accurate information as it serves as input for corrective action.

Peter Senge (1990) wrote in this regard that “organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and innovative ideas are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning to learn together” are able to adapt to rapid and unexpected changes and deliver high quality results.

This emphasis on learning is vital for leaders as well, to enable them to contribute towards changing the organisational culture from one of being static and merely reactive, to being dynamic and proactive. Leaders are expected to emphasise aspects such as personal development, shared understanding and values, without fully understanding what these concepts entail themselves.

The scope and potential of people must be unlocked, shaped and aligned with organisational values and strategy.

“Culture does not just happen. It is the result of deliberate leadership. It is the consequence of measurable behaviours.”

We assist organisations in developing a performance culture, aligned with the strategic plan and values of the organisation.

Mandate Molefi are Human Resources Consultants who have been in operation since 1990. The company started out as Mandate HR Consultants, and become Mandate Molefi in 1998. The company’s office is in Johannesburg, South Africa.